Author: dancatalano

Oh, what hath “Macaca” wrought? I mean, really—no matter how you feel about the gaffe-induced toppling of George “boot-in-mouth” Allen, I think we can now safely say that the introduction of the “Webb cam” into Virginia politics is going to prove more annoying than John Ashcroft’s singing voice.

I’m referring, of course, to the latest innovation to hit the nation’s oldest statehouse: invasive videography. It seems that the assembly’s Democrats, tired of being steamrolled by the Republican majority (who have taken to killing bills in early morning and late-night subcommittee sessions, when the votes don’t have to be recorded) have started videotaping every mind-numbing second of these extra-plenary activities, and then posting them to the InterTubes for all to see.

Raise your hand if you’d rather watch "Love Boat" reruns than members of the Virginia House of Delegates vote on a measure.

There are at least two huge problems with this strategy. The first is that, no matter how artfully you shoot them, state legislative sessions are about as exciting as Larry King’s sex life. Secondly, even if you catch these secretive statesmen arriving for work in silk camisoles and pirate hats, not a single YouTube user is going to give a rat’s ass. Believe me, the phrase “Virginia State Legislature” ranks somewhere around “Kevin Federline music video” in terms of viewer interest.

And what really rankles me about these videos (available at www.assemblyaccess.com, for those who find www.dryingpaint.com too stimulating) is how the Virginia Dems try to spice them up with amateurish effects (like adding the “Pink Panther Theme” to a video of Delegate Jeffrey M. Frederick directing his minions to block the camera), when there’s a deep well of actual idiocy out there, just waiting to be caught on tape.

I mean, just look what happened when NPR’s “Morning Edition” did a piece on the dozens of anti-illegal immigrant bills currently being sponsored in Virginia’s General Assembly: A veritable parade of excitable xenophobes lined up to make the sort of statements that would warm Virgil Goode’s heart. Take Delegate Mark Cole, for instance, who wants to make it a misdemeanor to even enter the state of Virginia without legal status. “My primary goal,” he told NPR, “is to try to make Virginia an unattractive destination for illegal immigrants.” (And, presumably, enlightened thinkers and compassionate people of every stripe.) Even better was Delegate Jack Reid, who is sponsoring a bill to make it a felony to knowingly assist an illegal immigrant. When NPR pointed out that this would criminalize the activities of many religious charities and soup kitchens, Reid drawled, “If they know it, and they’re purposefully doin’ it, we’re after them, too.” (Reid distinguished himself last session as the gun-toting house member who accidentally shot a bullet into his office door.)

And this is what they were willing to say to National Public Radio—a known Communist propaganda mouthpiece! Come on, Virginia Dems—just dress your videographer up like a reporter from the Washington Times, and you can probably get these goofballs to admit to shooting both Tupac and Biggie, causing global warming, and single-handedly delivering Florida’s electoral votes to George W. Bush in the 2000 election.

You remember Virginia, right? The first settled (and 10th admitted) American state? The one that launched our fledgling republic with the Declaration of Independence (some local carrot-top wrote it, from what I hear), provided the blueprint for our constitutional system of government via James Madison’s “Virginia Plan,” then popped out eight presidents for good measure (although Woodrow Wilson proved to be such a colossal bore, the “Mother of Presidents” apparently decided to give the whole prez-spawning business a rest for a while).

So you’d think we might’ve figured out the intricacies of this whole “governing” thing by now. But, from all available evidence, you’d be wrong. I hate to say it, but what used to be a world-class political farm team for that alabaster McMansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is looking more and more like the cast of Major League IV: The Search for Charlie Sheen’s Toupee. Sure, we’ve got a few star players (the kind of guys who aren’t afraid to tell Roll Call that they’d like to put a dusty combat boot up George Bush’s backside), but for every ornery Jim Webb and crusty-yet-competent John Warner, we’re also stuck with dozens of Virgil Goodes and Frank Hargroves—pompous dimwits who seem bound and determined to say the first damn fool thing that comes into their tiny, blow-dried heads.

In fact, anyone taking a cursory look at recent Virginia electoral history might easily assume that we’re running some sort of training school for the politically impaired—a sort of Xavier Academy for governmentally-challenged mutants. Honestly, it’s as if these pee-wee league pols don’t know the most basic things about American politics. Things like:

Politicians like Virgil Goode, Frank Hargrove and George Allen (left to right) better watch what they say. Our intrepid columnist is on their trail.

If your opponent’s dark-skinned campaign operative is pointing a video camera at you, you should probably resist the impulse to call him a monkey.

Or:

If you feel irresistibly compelled to send out a hate-filled screed about a recently elected Muslim congressman, you might want to double-check the mailing list to make sure it doesn’t include the chair of a left-leaning environmental group.

Or, of course:

If you’ve already alienated every African-American in the Commonwealth by telling them they “should get over” slavery, maybe it’s not the smartest idea to follow it up by wondering aloud if the Jews should “apologize for killing Christ,” and then top it all off by telling a fellow lawmaker whose ancestors emigrated from Nazi-occupied Poland that his skin’s a “little too thin.”

Not to be unduly harsh here, but isn’t there some sort of accrediting process to keep these amateurs from entering politics in the first place? Or, barring that, can’t we at least force these bush-leaguers to wear a ceremonial dunce cap at all subsequent public events, thereby proving that Virginia, the place where it all began, still has a shred of her precious dignity left?

Well, it might be a fool’s errand, but I’m going to start embroidering the Virginia state flag on that cap right now. (A flag which, unbeknownst to almost everyone, features a half-naked virgin stomping on a chain-wielding dead guy—but that’s a subject for an entirely different column.) And, as long as I have breath in my body, toner in my ink jet, and the ongoing indulgence of the fine folks at C-VILLE, I intend to place it on as many deserving heads as I possibly can.

Let the games begin!

You remember Virginia, right? The first settled (and 10th admitted) American state? The one that launched our fledgling republic with the Declaration of Independence (some local carrot-top wrote it, from what I hear), provided the blueprint for our constitutional system of government via James Madison’s “Virginia Plan,” then popped out eight presidents for good measure (although Woodrow Wilson proved to be such a colossal bore, the “Mother of Presidents” apparently decided to give the whole prez-spawning business a rest for a while).

So you’d think we might’ve figured out the intricacies of this whole “governing” thing by now. But, from all available evidence, you’d be wrong. I hate to say it, but what used to be a world-class political farm team for that alabaster McMansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is looking more and more like the cast of Major League IV: The Search for Charlie Sheen’s Toupee. Sure, we’ve got a few star players (the kind of guys who aren’t afraid to tell Roll Call that they’d like to put a dusty combat boot up George Bush’s backside), but for every ornery Jim Webb and crusty-yet-competent John Warner, we’re also stuck with dozens of Virgil Goodes and Frank Hargroves—pompous dimwits who seem bound and determined to say the first damn fool thing that comes into their tiny, blow-dried heads.

In fact, anyone taking a cursory look at recent Virginia electoral history might easily assume that we’re running some sort of training school for the politically impaired—a sort of Xavier Academy for governmentally-challenged mutants. Honestly, it’s as if these pee-wee league pols don’t know the most basic things about American politics. Things like:

Politicians like Virgil Goode, Frank Hargrove and George Allen (left to right) better watch what they say. Our intrepid columnist is on their trail.

If your opponent’s dark-skinned campaign operative is pointing a video camera at you, you should probably resist the impulse to call him a monkey.

Or:

If you feel irresistibly compelled to send out a hate-filled screed about a recently elected Muslim congressman, you might want to double-check the mailing list to make sure it doesn’t include the chair of a left-leaning environmental group.

Or, of course:

If you’ve already alienated every African-American in the Commonwealth by telling them they “should get over” slavery, maybe it’s not the smartest idea to follow it up by wondering aloud if the Jews should “apologize for killing Christ,” and then top it all off by telling a fellow lawmaker whose ancestors emigrated from Nazi-occupied Poland that his skin’s a “little too thin.”

Not to be unduly harsh here, but isn’t there some sort of accrediting process to keep these amateurs from entering politics in the first place? Or, barring that, can’t we at least force these bush-leaguers to wear a ceremonial dunce cap at all subsequent public events, thereby proving that Virginia, the place where it all began, still has a shred of her precious dignity left?

Well, it might be a fool’s errand, but I’m going to start embroidering the Virginia state flag on that cap right now. (A flag which, unbeknownst to almost everyone, features a half-naked virgin stomping on a chain-wielding dead guy—but that’s a subject for an entirely different column.) And, as long as I have breath in my body, toner in my ink jet, and the ongoing indulgence of the fine folks at C-VILLE, I intend to place it on as many deserving heads as I possibly can.

Let the games begin!

Those tired of "macaca"-gate can now move on to, um, "racier" ethnic slurs: Last week saw allegation after allegation published about racist comments and actions in George Allen’s past.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the Allen-for-senate headquarters. What can notoriously volatile Campaign Manager Dick Wadhams possibly be thinking as Allen’s reputation suffers, day by day, from the constant drip-drip-drip of accusations about the senator’s casual, college-age use of racist language? What was supposed to be an electoral cakewalk has turned into a desperate struggle for political dominance, and each new revelation about Allen’s colorful vocabulary drags the candidate closer to parity with his upstart challenger, former Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb.
    Allen’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week began on Sunday, September 24, when Salon.com’s Michael Scherer published a detailed report, based on interviews with three of the senator’s former UVA football teammates, claiming that Allen “repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.”
    Still reeling from the ongoing “Macaca” mess—and his clumsy handling of questions concerning his mother’s Jewish heritage—Allen couldn’t have been happy to see these accusations in print. Still, Scherer only managed to get one player (former tight end Ken Shelton) to speak on the record, and Salon is well known for its liberal slant, so the Allen team surely hoped to simply dismiss the report and move on.
    But then the floodgates opened. The following day, in rapid succession, The New York Times and MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” advanced the story significantly. Writing in the Times, David Kirkpatrick not only got more juicy anecdotes from Shelton (including a tale which involved Allen affixing a deer’s severed head to a black family’s mailbox), but also located yet another witness, Christopher Taylor, to attest to Allen’s offensive vocabulary. Taylor, who is now a professor at Alabama University, described an early-’80s tour of Allen’s farm in which the two man stumbled across some turtles. At that point, as the Times tactfully put it, “Mr. Allen said that ‘around here’ only the African Americans—whom he referred to by the epithet—‘eat ‘em.’”
    Later that day, appearing on “Hardball,” ubiquitous talking head (and UVA alum) politics Professor Larry Sabato piled on: “The fact is he did use the N-word,” Sabato said, “whether he denies it or not.”
    To make matters even worse, Allen soon found himself fighting a two-front war, as the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV)—once stalwart supporters of Virginia’s confederate-flag-loving senator—publicly criticized Allen for distancing himself from his previous stance. “The denunciation of the [Confederate] flag to score political points is anathema to our organization,” fumed ex-SCV state commander Brag Bowling.
    Buffeted on all sides, Allen’s campaign made the most obvious of tactical decisions: It went on the attack. First Allen released a hard-hitting ad, featuring three female graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy, which accused Webb of being anti-women, both in his fiction and nonfiction writing. Then, apparently hoping to create a “pox on both their houses” backlash, the Allen campaign referred a Washington Post reporter to one Dan Cragg, who claimed that Webb also used the “N-word” while talking with Cragg about his days at USC in the 1960s.
“They would hop into their cars, and would go down to Watts with these buddies of his,” Cragg told the Post. “They would take the rifles down there. They would call them [epithets], point the rifles at them, pull the triggers and then drive off laughing.”
    Although the story seems outrageous on its face (Webb immediately denied it, saying, “In 1963, you couldn’t go to Watts and do that kind of thing. You’d get killed”), it soon prompted a round of stories about Webb’s own use of racially charged language. (Webb employed the N-word in his first novel, Fields of Fire, but has said he never used it as a slur.)
    It remains to be seen how all of this unpleasantness will ultimately play out at the polls. The voters of Virginia, it can safely be assumed, are getting weary of the nonstop mudslinging and reports of decades-old obscenities. The only real question, at this point, is which candidate is going to get punished for it.

In the wake of George Allen’s "Macaca" misstep, the senator’s campaign held an "Ethnic Rally," hoping that a multi-culti photo op might put the controversy behind him. But recent revelations about Allen’s casual, college-age use of racist language could make his political recovery more difficult than ever.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, here are a few things that Virginia’s Republican Senator George Allen has done over the past few weeks: held an “Ethnic Rally,” where he met with constituents of every available race, creed and color; delivered remarks at a National Historically Black Colleges and Universities luncheon, where he discussed how his recent “civil rights pilgrimages to the deep South” had given him a “much deeper understanding of [the South’s] cold-hearted history”; prominently touted the endorsement of State Sen. Benjamin J. Lambert, a black Democrat, on his website; and released a statement embracing his Jewish heritage.
    If you’ve been on an extended, TV-and-cell-phone-free camping expedition, this probably all comes as quite a shock. This is, after all, the same George Allen who reportedly hung a noose from a ficus tree in his Charlottesville law office and prominently displayed a Confederate flag in a cabin near his Earlysville home (it was part of a “collection of flags,” he claimed—although The Daily Progress’ Bob Gibson quoted a pair of officials who recalled only two flags: “a Confederate flag and, on an opposite wall, an American flag”). In addition, as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Allen opposed a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King and, after being elected governor in 1993, proclaimed April to be Confederate History and Heritage Month, honoring the Confederacy’s “four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights.”
    But all of that was before Senator Allen, feeling his oats at an early-August outdoor rally in Breaks, Virginia, delivered a single off-the-cuff remark directly into the video camera of S.R. Sidarth, a UVA student of Indian descent who was taping the rally for Allen’s opponent, Democrat James Webb.

There are, basically, three campaign missteps a politician seeks to avoid at all costs. The first is caused by organizational failure—usually when the campaign team throws their candidate into a situation that produces images of a highly embarrassing nature. (Remember Michael Dukakis tooling around in a giant tank, his tiny little head swallowed up by his big-boy’s helmet?) The second involves a verbal gaffe or display of weakness, usually spawned by the rigors of nonstop campaigning. Democratic hopeful Ed Muskie’s tearful ‘72 speech defending himself against charges of racism and John Kerry’s forehead-slapping “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it” sound bite are prime examples of what can go wrong when emotion and exhaustion overtakes a candidate’s common sense.
    But the third type of blunder can be the most damaging of all. It comes about when an apparently lucid, completely unscripted candidate blurts out something so wrongheaded and offensive, even their most ardent backers are at a loss to explain it. From Jesse Jackson calling New York “Hymietown” in an ’84 interview to Senator Trent Lott proclaiming that, had segregationist Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign been successful, “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years,” pols have repeatedly found this particular strain of foot-in-mouth disease to be politically deadly.
    Which is why the campaign of Senator George Allen is in such a frenzy to quash the ongoing controversy created by his extemporaneous remarks on that August day.
“This fellow over here with the yellow shirt,” the senator began, smiling generously, “Macaca, or whatever his name is. He’s with my opponent. He’s following us around everywhere. And it’s just great.” After pointing out that Webb was currently in California, attending a fundraiser with a “bunch of Hollywood movie moguls,” Allen once again addressed Sidarth directly: “Let’s give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America, and the real world of Virginia.” As has been repeatedly noted since the tape became public, Sidarth was born and raised in Fairfax County, and his parents currently live in Dunn Loring.
    If a gaffe is, as Michael Kinsley famously defined it, “when a politician tells the truth,” this one was a doozy. Despite Allen’s repeated denials (“It’s just made up… a made-up word,” he recently insisted on “Meet the Press,” and has claimed that he was simply riffing on the word “mohawk,” because of Sidarth’s mullet-like haircut), his pointed use of the same word twice lead many to suspect that he knew exactly what he was saying.
    But what was he saying, exactly? Well, “Macaca” is French, derived from the Portuguese “macaco,” and refers to a genus of short-tailed monkeys. Its plural, “macaque,” is also used as a racially charged insult in French-influenced African nations, such as Tunisia. As has also been widely reported, Allen’s mother, Etty, was raised in Tunisia, and spoke five languages, including French, around the Allen household—a fact that Allen has mentioned repeatedly.
    And, as it turns out, the slur is not nearly as rare or obscure as the Allen campaign might claim. Sidarth himself, in an online interview at ABDCLady.com, says that it wasn’t his first exposure to the term. “I’d heard it when I was studying in Spain last fall,” he told the site. “Not directed towards me, but I’d heard the term used.” In addition, Jeffrey Feldman—who publishes his “frameshop” diaries on left-wing blog Daily Kos—has found numerous instances of the word “macaque” being used by white supremacists to refer disparagingly to African-Americans on hate sites like stormfront.org, years before the current controversy erupted.

And this is where the Allen tale really goes off the rails. When, at a recent Tyson’s Corner debate, Allen was asked by WUSA TV reporter Peggy Fox whether he could have possibly heard the term growing up, he bristled. When Fox followed up by asking about his mother’s religious heritage (Allen’s Jewish grandfather, Felix Lumbroso, was imprisoned by the Nazis during the German occupation of Tunis), he positively seethed. “Why is that relevant?” he shot back. When Fox answered, “Honesty, that’s all,” Allen mocked her savagely. “Oh, that’s all? That’s just all?”
    As it turned out, that was just all. Although Allen claimed ignorance (“…she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian”), the following Thursday’s Washington Post reported that his mother had actually revealed her Jewish heritage to him in late August.
    By this point, George Allen’s story has become so convoluted and incoherent, it seems like his tobacco-chewin’ good ol’ boy persona might be damaged beyond repair. While he continues to try to joke his way through the political thicket (speaking with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Allen called his Jewish roots “just an interesting nuance to my background,” and quipped, “I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops”), most folks aren’t laughing.
    In fact, it’s no longer just the ill-advised use of a single, obscure racial epithet that Allen has to worry about. Yes, his “Macaca” jab was damaging, but it’s all of the subsequent fumbling and mistruths that may finally push Allen’s carefully calibrated political angle of repose past its tipping point, and drop Virginia’s once-invincible senator—and highly touted 2008 presidential hopeful—into the political scrap heap.—Dan Catalano

Bob Moje co-founded local educational-design powerhouse VMDO Architects in 1976, the year he graduated from UVA’s School of Architecture, and has gone on to design dozens of large-scale projects (including the award-winning Manassas Park High School). As lead architect on the vast John Paul Jones project, Moje used every ounce of knowledge and experience he’s collected over the past quarter century to help make UVA’s arena dreams a reality. We asked him what it was like.

C-VILLE: How difficult was it to design a “Jeffersonian” building on such a monumental scale?
Bob Moje: Well, it was an enormous challenge. I mean, a project of that size is certainly going to be noticed. And we knew right from the beginning that it was going to be a project that not everybody would like… There’s always a fine line you’re walking when working among Jefferson’s buildings. The time we’re in, and the building types we have, these were things that didn’t exist in his day. Our goal was to get the best of all worlds.

What most influenced your design process?
Well, the building had significant functional aspects that we had to achieve. It’s not only the Jefferson context—it’s all the buildings of that type that have been done before. It’s a building type that has been built for centuries, going back to the Roman Coliseum… These kinds of buildings have been built many times over. We attempted to learn from those and do something that was a positive step in the evolution of buildings constructed by the University.

As a longtime Charlottesville resident, do you ever worry about excessive growth?
That’s always a big question to ask an architect. We’d like to have everything go the way we’d like; that’s what we do, is envision how it could be. I think Charlottesville is a wonderful place to live, and has a lot going for it. The debate tends to be growing or not growing—and I don’t think there’s any choice but that it grow. Therefore the question is how it can grow to be the best it can be as it gets larger. And I think the JPJ is an example of that. Too often, I think, we’ve settled for second or third best as we’ve done things, and I think, as long we continue to strive to create buildings that represent the best of what we can do, Charlottesville will remain a wonderful place to live.

There’s just no denying it—the thing is absolutely massive. On the main approach from Emmet Street (where thousands of basketball game and concert goers will surely get a nice, long look as they sit stranded in event-day traffic), the $129 million John Paul Jones Arena rises out of its minimally landscaped surroundings like a square-browed giant buried up to his neck in grass-fuzzed clay. A low line of square portals draws a gap-toothed grimace, while sequoia-thick Tuscan columns rise past his red brick cheeks, supporting a crown of decorative concrete beams that thrust, pergola-like, over the distant ground. A huge swath of glass splits the façade in half, but the effect is more imposing than inviting—overall, this particular view of the arena splits the aesthetic difference between a convention center and a maximum-security prison.
    Turn the corner onto Massie Avenue, and things gradually get better. While biking past the southeast entrance does, somewhat disconcertingly, evoke the opening of the original Star Wars—with that colossal Imperial Destroyer just going on and on and on—the building’s humongous bulk gradually fades into the rising landscape, and its profile slims to an almost human scale. In fact, by the time you reach the front entrance—marked by more of those faux-Jeffersonian columns and spiky pergolas, but this time in a far-more-inviting curved formation—the JPJ seems surprisingly moderate and welcoming. In fact, visitors who didn’t know better might conceivably enter the parking lot from the west, look across the street to the billowing concrete parachute of University Hall, and assume that they were at the smaller of the two venues.
    As if. At 366,000 square feet (and with enough seating to accommodate 15,000 screaming sports fans), the JPJ is the largest entertainment facility in the state, and the fourth largest basketball arena in the ACC. It could easily hold every single UVA undergrad, with enough seats and luxury boxes left over to accommodate every Albemarle and Charlottesville high school student, as well. Considering that the Cavs’ average attendance for home games at U-Hall was reportedly about 7,750 last season (and given the fact that the team hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since 2001), it seems optimistic to the point of delusional to think they could fill a space of this size on a regular basis.
    But don’t tell that to the powers that be. UVA is outwardly bullish on their prospects of generating fan excitement this season, and with some reason. Although new basketball coach Dave Leitao led the team to only a middling .500 season in his first year, he has a sterling reputation, and his recent recruitment of two Top 100 prospects (small forwards Jamil Tucker and Will Harris), along with the return of superstar junior point guard Sean Singletary, give the team all the makings of a true NCAA contender.
    “There’s no doubt that we’ll have bigger crowds,” says UVA Director of Athletics Craig Littlepage. “With University Hall, and its limited capacity, we didn’t have an opportunity to bring in fans—all the fans that were interested in seeing Virginia and ACC basketball on a continuing basis. But with the capacity of 15,000, we’ll have the ability to meet the needs of Virginia basketball fans across the Commonwealth—particularly those who are going to want to be season ticket holders.”
    After pointing out all of the luxurious bells and whistles that the JPJ boasts, for both fans and players alike (mahogany-covered lockers! A space-age audio and lighting system, with four high-end Mitsubishi scoreboard screens!), Littlepage acknowledges, ever-so-slightly, the challenge that UVA basketball faces in reaching and maintaining such an exponential increase in game attendance.
    “Hopefully,” he says, “the arena will be just that component that will have these people connected to the University, and our programs, for a very long time.”

“Our job is to put butts in the seats.”

The JPJ’s new General Manager, Larry Wilson, is a boyish, affable salesman—
a cheerful and hyper-competent Southerner who radiates good will and rarely says a word that doesn’t fulfill his prime directive: Always promote the arena.
    Although many assume that the University is officially in charge of the JPJ, it’s actually Wilson’s employer, SMG Entertainment, that is responsible for the concert booking and day-to-day operation of the arena.
    A native of Memphis, Wilson’s welcoming drawl and affinity for promotional knick-knacks are the first things you notice about him. On the day that the University’s outgoing project manager, Dick Laurance, is officially set to hand Wilson the keys to the JPJ, SMG is obviously still in the process of moving in. Stacks of framed posters line the walls of Wilson’s office: a signed caricature of Aerosmith, a Shania Twain one-sheet proclaiming “The Wait is Over,” a blow-up of Wilson himself on the cover of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Weekend Magazine. The newly installed bookshelves hold an autographed pair of basketball shoes, a strap-on plastic pig nose and, most intriguingly, a joke book titled I Hate Tennessee: 303 Reasons Why You Should, Too.
     SMG is a global entertainment company that specializes in large-scale venue management. The company was tapped to run the John specifically because of its incredible breadth of experience—with more than 200 theaters, coliseums and arenas under contract (including such diverse venues as the Plaza Theatre in El Paso, Texas, and something called “Palladium” in Dubai, UAE), SMG is truly one of the giants of the industry. But, to hear Wilson tell it, the entire intricate enterprise really boils down to one thing.
    “Our job,” he says, smiling broadly, “is to put butts in the seats.”
    And this, it can be said without hesitation, is something that SMG does remarkably well. If anyone should doubt it, they need look no further than the highly successful Rolling Stones concert that the company helped bring to Scott Stadium earlier this year. “Charlottesville was the smallest market on that tour,” Wilson points out, “so it really was a coup.”
    And, if he has his way, those aging British bad boys will just be a warm-up act for bigger things to come. Working hand-in-hand with Charlottesville-based promotional big shots Red Light Management (which, along with JPJ ticketing agency MusicToday, is owned by local rock ‘n’ real estate mogul Coran Capshaw), SMG has arranged for the John’s inaugural musical event to be a rare two-night stand by Charlottesvillian demi-gods the Dave Matthews Band.
    But it isn’t really Dave (or Eric Clapton, or James Taylor) who forms the cornerstone of SMG’s strategy when it comes to filling the gaping entertainment hole that the JPJ represents. No, that honor falls to mass-appeal country artists such as Kenny Chesney and cross-generational attractions like Cirque du Soleil, the Wiggles and the Ringling Bros. Circus.
    “What our job is,” Wilson says, “is to appeal to a wide range of people. Whether it’s a religious concert, a children’s show, something that appeals to the country fans… Our fans are going to come from the region, not necessarily just from Charlottesville. And I think we need acts that will appeal to a wide range of individuals.”
    And that, in a nutshell, is going to be the make-or-break proposition for the John, at least as an entertainment venue. Are there enough people in the surrounding areas who will make the trek, and pay top-dollar ticket prices of $75 or more, to see their favorite acts? For Wilson, it’s a gamble he’s more than willing to take.
    “If you’ve got an act like an Eric Clapton, who’s going to play one date in the state of Virginia,” he says, “we’re going to pull from everywhere. We’re going to pull from West Virginia, we’re going to pull from D.C., we’re going to pull from everywhere. If you’re talking a Kenny Chesney…well, he’s playing Nissan Pavilion, Virginia Beach, and my facility.  He’s sold out both of those, so we’ll see how well we do.”
    As we walk out onto the cavernous playing floor—the sectional basketball court taken up for the moment, revealing the mottled concrete below, construction workers and inspectors and forklifts running every which way to ready the arena for its August 1 opening—I dare to ask the forbidden question. What if it doesn’t work? What if Sean Singletary retires tomorrow, and the Wiggles moon the audience during their opening number, turning off a critical segment of elderly, conservative concert-goers? Does the JPJ eventually become the world’s most expensive shopping mall, or what?
    Wilson smiles his consummate salesman’s smile, flashing the look of a parent indulging an annoyingly inquisitive child. “No,” he replies. “I mean, that’s just not going to happen.”

The competition?

Across town, in an imposing brick building with round, ship-portal windows overlooking the Downtown Mall, Kirby Hutto, manager of the Charlottesville Pavilion, is settling in. In theory, Hutto is both Larry Wilson’s counterpart and nominal adversary. Even though the 1-year-old Pavilion—with its distinctive, circus-style white tent and towering steel arch—is an outdoor venue, and has a maximum seated capacity of only 3,500 (though they can squeeze in more for general admission shows), it will still be competing with the JPJ for certain acts.
    After all, one of the selling points of the John was its “flexibility.” Not only can the lower decks retract to expand the available floor space, but the arena also features an ingenious curtain system that can restrict seating to just the “lower bowl,” transforming the cathedral-like arena into an intimate theater of around 5,000 seats.
    But this is Charlottesville, after all. Thanks to the success of DMB—and the subsequent success of band manager Coran Capshaw’s Red Light Management—this once-sleepy town now boasts more booking and promotional clout than many cities twice its size, and so the situation isn’t quite so cut and dry. As it turns out, Hutto works under the same umbrella of companies that includes both MusicToday and Red Light, and is therefore, in some ways, unavoidably connected to the entertainment-booking nexus that stretches from Starr Hill all the way to the John Paul Jones Arena. But, as he sits in his new office, surrounded by half-installed computer stations and snaking piles of electrical cord, Hutto adamantly rejects the idea that he and Wilson will be chasing the same acts.
    “I don’t see where any of the acts that we’re going to be bringing to the Pavilion would be big enough to bring into the JPJ—I think you’re just looking at apples and oranges there,” he insists. “Probably the bigger question is, are there enough entertainment dollars in this market to support full programming at the JPJ, the Pavilion and the Paramount? And so far all the indications are yes.”
    But where are all these folks coming from? Hutto, obviously well versed in the data, has an exact answer for that, as well. “Look, you use to have to drive to Richmond, to D.C., to Tidewater, to the Kennedy Center to see these acts. Not that they’re coming [to the Pavilion], we draw people from the Valley, we draw from Culpeper, Warrenton, Lynchburg, even on down as far as Danville.”
    Which, once again, speaks to the question of what kind of acts, exactly, will pull in large enough crowds to make it worth everyone’s while. Although Hutto is reticent to give out exact numbers, he’s willing to concede that cutting-edge acts like Ween and the Flaming Lips, who might appeal to more cosmopolitan Charlottesville natives and transplanted New Yorker types, don’t do anywhere near as well as broad-appeal acts like Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson. It’s probably a safe bet to say that newly minted country starts Montgomery Gentry—who, one imagines, remain largely unknown among city residents—did far better business during their recent Pavilion run than the highly touted (and half-full) Pixies reunion show did last September.
    “We want to serve the entire market,” Hutto says. “That’s why we’ve gone after country artists and will continue to go after country artists. Those shows have done great for us. And I think that’s a really underserved market.” But Hutto is also quick to point out that there are tons of non-country artists who fill a similar need. “The same thing goes for James Brown,” he says. “We’re looking at acts who haven’t had a venue to play within Charlottesville—to serve that segment of the market that is willing to come out and buy tickets.”
    But doesn’t it all just seem a little…overwhelming? For folks who were around in the ‘70s and ‘80s—when there wasn’t even a “Charlottesville” road sign on Route 29S until you got within 45 miles of town—this recent flurry of large-scale construction and mass-appeal entertainment can often seem like an unstoppable steamroller, coming to squash everything interesting about Charlottesville into one flat, boring, middle-of-the-road pop-culture pancake.
    “People can try to make that argument,” Hutto responds. “I think there’s an element within the Charlottesville market that does not embrace change… Sure, it’s safe to say ‘it’s not gonna work’—but they’re just putting their heads in the sand. We’re successful, the Paramount is successful, and JPJ is certainly going to be successful. People are speaking with their wallets.”

Showtime

Sunday night, June 16. Just for the hell of it, I decide to walk down to the Belmont Bridge and try to catch some of the sold-out Willie Nelson show at the Pavilion. It’s already become a Pavilion concert-night tradition for the curious and ticketless to watch the shows for free from the overpass, and tonight is certainly no exception. The crowd lining the retaining wall is high-spirited and diverse—everything from a family of four that drove in from Louisa to a gaggle of punks and goths who wandered over from the west end of the Mall. The atmosphere is festive and slightly subversive—everyone feels like they’re putting one over on the Pavilion, having avoided the up-to-$60-with-service-charge ticket price and, in the process, gotten a much better view of Willie’s tour bus and smoke-shrouded walk to the stage.
    It occurs to me that Willie Nelson is, in many ways, the perfect act for the new Charlottesville. He draws equally from county fans, rockers, boomers, stoners and “King of the Hill” fans, and—because of his well-deserved “outlaw” reputation—it’s difficult for even the snootiest old-timer to deny the red-headed stranger at least a modicum of respect. The real question is this: How many Willies are out there? How many acts are going to draw that kind of crowd, and get folks to pay that kind of a price to see them?
    Right before Willie hits the stage, I strike up a conversation with the guy next to me, who’s been talking energetically about UVA basketball’s prospects next season.
    “Oh, they’re going all the way this year,” he assures me. “Only teams that can beat ‘em are Carolina and Duke.”
    I ask if he’s excited by the prospect of seeing the Cavs in the new arena.
    “Oh, no doubt, no doubt. I hear they got, what, 30,000 seats or something? And those Diamond Vision screens. That’s gonna be sweet, bro.”
    And what about concerts?
    “I dunno. Who’s coming?”
    I run down the list, but he doesn’t seem very interested until I mention Kenny Chesney.
    “Oh, Chesney’s coming? Man, I’d like to see that. Probably won’t have the cash, though—got to get my car fixed.”
    So the cost of the ticket might be a
problem?
    “Might be?” The guy laughs and spreads his arms wide, embracing the freeloading crowd on all sides of him. “Look around, bro. Why do you think I’m up here in the first place?”